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THE LEO WAY
A South Side Catholic school creates a sense of brotherhood
BY JAKE MAZANKE // PHOTOS BY SUSIE MOSKOP
Isaiah Nichols was afraid to go to school in the morning. Each day, Nichols faced harassment and bullying from fellow students at his charter school on Chicago’s South Side.
“(The charter school) was very hostile,” Nichols said. “Many of the adults there really weren’t helping, some students were in gangs, there was a lot of negative things going on.”
After Nichols finished his sophomore year, his mother knew she needed to find another option for her son. She took her son on a tour of a school in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood, Leo Catholic High School.
“I was looking for a school that was going to challenge me and help me get to college and develop me as a person and help me build my character more,” Nichols said.
On the tour of Leo, his mother, Frankie Nichols was informed of the $7,000 tuition — a sizeable sum for a family of modest means. She said she was so worried about the safety of her son at his old charter school that she said she would be willing to pay for a better education for her son.
The tuition would cost less than a funeral for her son, she said.
Frankie Nichols believes that she made the right choice by sending her son to Leo, an all-male high school.
“They have done amazing with with him and he has had a chance to be himself,” she said. “Now he is bugging me. He wouldn’t be late — we have to be out by 7:30. He hasn’t missed a day or anything. He has had perfect attendance.”
Although Leo Catholic High School is located in a neighborhood with one of the highest crime rates in Chicago and has seen a significant change in the student body since it was founded 89 years ago, it has been successful in graduating students and sending them to college.
When Leo was founded in 1926, the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood was almost exclusively white. It was comprised heavily of Irish Roman Catholics who flocked to the neighborhood because of its proximity and easy accessibility to the Chicago stockyards.
Now the neighborhood is 98 percent black.
Dan McGrath, who was a 1968 graduate and the current president of Leo Catholic High School, saw the change within the neighborhood while he was a student.
“Between my sophomore and junior year at Leo, there were some black-on-white shootings on the South Side,” McGrath said. “The shootings caused a white flight at supersonic speed.”
When McGrath enrolled at Leo High School in 1964, he said the student body had a population of more than 1,000 students who were predominantly white. By the time he graduated, McGrath witnessed many of the white students move away from the South Side and leave Leo.
Leo currently has an enrollment 150 male students enrolled who come from 29 different zip codes around Chicago. The student body is 92 percent black.
Although the surrounding area has changed in the last 89 years, Leo has remained a constant in the neighborhood.
Leo stands between many boarded-up and run-down buildings. The large, tan brick structure on the corner of South Sangamon Street and 79th Street is a clear outlier. Its gated entrance leads to a small courtyard that is often filled with students after school hours. The doorway leading into the school is framed by two large pillars which extend upward to support a small overhang that adorns a cross.
When entering the building, the aged wooden floors wind through quaint faculty offices and into a corridor that is designated as the school’s hall of fame. This small hallway is lined with trophies and plaques of the many achievements that the school and students have gained throughout the years.
The end of the hall of fame opens into a large lunchroom that echoes with the booming banter of students. There is a high energy present during lunch
hours, as students scoot between tables, laughing and joking. The smell of freshly cooked food and the odor of the teenage boys is pungent in the air. Between bites of their lunches, it is not uncommon to see students pushing and grabbing at one another, innocently roughhousing.
Within the classroom, the teachers of Leo have been successful in working with their students to prepare them for further education. Over the last six years, Leo has graduated all of its of its seniors and sent 96 percent of its students to college.
Yet, many of the staff members at Leo credit their academic successes to the motivation of their students who are determined to make the most of their education.
“The families don’t have as much as other families at other schools I’ve been at, but they care just as much,” Leo principal Philip Messina said. “We have a school of motivated families. There is a tuition here. For a family that doesn’t have a lot to begin with and that family chooses to pay tuition, I mean, that is motivation in itself.”
The most important value of the school, a strong sense of brotherhood within the student population, is something that Leo has aimed to teach its students for many years.
“The values that they instilled in me, we instill in the kids today,” said Michael Holmes, a Leo alumnus and current dean of admissions. “I think it makes a difference in the way our kids are developed and their success in college and how they go about becoming men.”
A sense of brotherhood is established the moment the incoming freshman walk in the door at Leo, and the first thing that every student learns at school is the Leo fight song. The sense of brotherhood is what many of the Leo faculty say help propel so many of their students to graduation.
“If you have a bond with your fellow brother, you are gonna push him. You are going to motivate him to get better,” Holmes said.
Leo senior, Dexter Dale Jr., is a prime example of the importance of leadership. Although he was excited about applying to college and spending time with friends in his final year of high school, what he wanted most from his senior year was to be seen as a good leader to younger students.
“We want the freshmen to have a good start like we did,” Dale said. “We want the freshmen to follow in our footsteps so they can have an enjoyable year.”
Nichols has also blossomed into a great leader since he has enrolled in Leo. He is regarded by many of the faculty as one of the best and brightest students at the school and is currently ranked second in his graduating class.
Nichols has high aspirations for his future. His long-time dream has been to study criminal justice in college and eventually become a member of a police SWAT team.
“[Leo] has changed me a lot. I have different perspectives about things in life,” Nichols said. “I know the definition of how to be a responsible man. I know how how to work hard and be more determined and dedicated because I have a lot of father figures at Leo and a lot of role models.”
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